Netplay Lag

Sblounskched · Post by **Sblounskched** » Sun May 28, 2006 3:14 am

OK, here's the story.

Myself and my girlfriend used to play on ZSNES v1.42 for several months. We played through Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, and I guided her through some Final Fantasy IV. We also played Turtles in Time and assorted other games. I have cable and she has DSL, and all of these games worked just fine - no lag or anything. It felt as though we were in the same room playing on the console when we were actually playing over the internet.

Anyway, my girlfriend got a new computer - one that is about twice as powerful as her last one. Her specs match mine pretty closely now - 2.8GHZ P4 processor, 512 RAM, etc. But on the new computer, we're getting a lot of lag. The response time from our controllers to the game is way off, and the screen will skip ahead a few frames, then back a few. It makes it practically impossible to play games like Mario or Donkey Kong. Just about the only thing we can play without too much trouble is Tetris.

I've tried all the things listed in the "Having trouble with Netplay?" thread. Firewall ports are forwarded properly. We downloaded and tried version 1.36 of ZSNES and got the same results. Did a spyware scan/cleaning of both of our computers (and got rid of a few minor things but nothing major) and that didn't help. I looked through all of her video card settings and turned off hardware acceleration to try to correct it but it didn't help. I even went through each of her running processes on her computer and turned off the non-essential programs. And still, we have terrible lag.

The only slight improvement I saw was when I turned down the Latency setting on the bottom of the Netplay chat window. I turned it down to 1 (the lowest it would go) and the button response was a lot better. But the screen still jumped around, making it difficult to jump on enemies in Mario or just about anything else that requires proper timing.

So... anyone have any ideas? I think I've exhausted every option I could think of. We USED to have it running just fine - and on a SLOWER computer! Go figure.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you!!

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Sun May 28, 2006 6:26 am

Are you using TCP or UDP connections?

Sblounskched · Post by **Sblounskched** » Sun May 28, 2006 5:08 pm

AntoineWG wrote:Are you using TCP or UDP connections?

We tried both. And I have both enabled on my router where I forwarded the ports.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Sun May 28, 2006 8:11 pm

To use UDP, both ends have to have UDP forwarded.

Sblounskched · Post by **Sblounskched** » Mon May 29, 2006 5:07 am

AntoineWG wrote:To use UDP, both ends have to have UDP forwarded.

She does not have a router. She has only one computer on the internet and the DSL plugs directly into the computer.

Joe Camacho · Post by **Joe Camacho** » Mon May 29, 2006 5:21 am

Sblounskched wrote:
AntoineWG wrote:To use UDP, both ends have to have UDP forwarded.
She does not have a router. She has only one computer on the internet and the DSL plugs directly into the computer.

That doesn't rule out the existence of software firewalls, like zonealarm or microsoft firewall.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Mon May 29, 2006 5:36 am

Joe Camacho wrote:
Sblounskched wrote:
AntoineWG wrote:To use UDP, both ends have to have UDP forwarded.
She does not have a router. She has only one computer on the internet and the DSL plugs directly into the computer.
That doesn't rule out the existence of software firewalls, like zonealarm or microsoft firewall.

Or the possibility that the modem has some routing/firewall functionality built into it, like the 2-Wire DSL modems, among others.

Firon · Post by **Firon** » Mon May 29, 2006 5:57 am

Zone Alarm is a pretty poor firewall, so I'd suggest to uninstall it if present. Also, the NVIDIA Firewall chokes on UDP packets. Most software firewalls have some problem or another, uninstalling them is a good way to see if they're the problem

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Mon May 29, 2006 8:20 am

Or just disable/deactivate them. Leaving a computer without a router unprotected is a very bad idea. A crappy software firewall, if properly configured, is better than nothing.

Sblounskched · Post by **Sblounskched** » Mon May 29, 2006 4:02 pm

She doesn't have any software firewall except Windows Firewall, which gave the option to "unblock" the first time we tried this and she did that.

I doubt her modem has any kind of built-in firewall because ZSNES worked just fine on her old computer with the same internet connection.

Edit: We disabled the Windows Firewall just for a trial run and it didn't make a difference.